On the last word her gaze shifted, not to me, but to the Emperor who stood beside us, summoned by Martin’s call and radiating cold rage like the marble of a hillside monument which marks some unforgiven massacre. I doubt I would have had the strength to stand in the presence of Caesar’s anger, even if I had had the strength to stand at all. Instead I slumped on the ground beside Martin. The rustic mosaic floor was not perhaps the best bed for a wounded man, but Saladin was, wrapped around me, his warmth coaxing my thinned blood to move again as he explored with touch and tongue the parts of me our enemies had marred. Sun warmed me too. Martin and I had reversed the sunset on our flight from parts east back to Europe, and late afternoon blazed down between the columns that ringed this ancient courtyard, Spring and Sun working their annual conspiracy to nurture weed flowers in every crack. The warmth was welcome, but even more welcome was the glare, which hid with silhouette the face of the other figure who sat on a stone rail to our right, chaperoning us: His exhausted Majesty Isabel Carlos II. No, reader, we are not in Paris anymore. Madame’s estate was riot’s first victim. The sparkling halls, whores’ dorms, flesh pit, and silk-walled salons, even the nursery where a young God learned to speak, are now burnt waste. We are in the ancient Abbey of Santa María la Real de las Huelgas, just outside Burgos. Here the Middle Ages put forth their best stone face, fort-thick walls and slit-thin windows, somehow still managing a feminine delicacy in the ruffling of terra-cotta shingles and the curve of the rounded apse. The abbey is one of the oldest pieces of the Spanish royal estates, host to kings’ treasures, reliquaries, retired dowagers, and, frequently, royal weddings. Here king and queen become one flesh, and one dust too in the royal tombs whose intricate sarcophagi were tended once by nuns, now by nation-strat-appointed custodians. Before war drove God out of politics, the ruling abbess here was one of the most powerful women in all Europe; now Isabel Carlos II prayed that these cloister walls might be enough to hide Madame.

“There are arenas in which I have never trusted you, Joyce”—MASON stepped forward—“and others in which I have.”

“As it should be, yes.” Madame was exquisite as she sat on a bench of sun-washed stone, her oceanic gown of mourning black sparkling with constellations of gemlike somethings stitched into the fabric. “You know I feel the same.”

“Do you realize how thoroughly this has destroyed what little remained of the latter?”

“Yes, I believe I do, but I had the chance, Cornel. I had to take it, and I had every right to take it.”

“You had no right—”